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RESEARCH ARTICLE

A leprosy clinical severity scale for erythema


nodosum leprosum: An international,
multicentre validation study of the ENLIST ENL
Severity Scale
Stephen L. Walker1*, Anna M. Sales2, C. Ruth Butlin3, Mahesh Shah4, Armi Maghanoy5,
Saba M. Lambert1,6, Joydeepa Darlong7, Benjamin Jewel Rozario3, Vivek V. Pai8,
Marivic Balagon5, Shimelis N. Doni9, Deanna A. Hagge4, José A. C. Nery2, Kapil
a1111111111 D. Neupane4, Suwash Baral4, Biliom A. Sangma3, Digafe T. Alembo9, Abeba M. Yetaye9,
a1111111111 Belaynesh A. Hassan9, Mohammed B. Shelemo9, Peter G. Nicholls1, Diana N.
a1111111111 J. Lockwood1, on behalf of the Erythema Nodosum Leprosum International STudy Group¶
a1111111111
1 Department of Clinical Research, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene
a1111111111 and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom, 2 Leprosy Laboratory, Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Fiocruz, Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, 3 Department of Medicine, The Leprosy Mission International, Dhaka, Bangladesh,
4 Department of Dermatology and Mycobacterial Research Laboratories, The Leprosy Mission Nepal,
Anandaban Hospital, Kathmandu, Nepal, 5 Department of Dermatology, Leonard Wood Memorial Center for
TB and Leprosy Research, Cebu, Philippines, 6 Department of Family Medicine, Suisse Clinic, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, 7 Department of Medicine, The Leprosy Mission Hospital, Purulia, India, 8 Bombay Leprosy
OPEN ACCESS
Project, Mumbai, India, 9 Department of Dermatology, ALERT Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Citation: Walker SL, Sales AM, Butlin CR, Shah M,
Maghanoy A, Lambert SM, et al. (2017) A leprosy ¶ The other members of the Erythema Nodosum Leprosum International STudy (ENLIST) Group are listed in
clinical severity scale for erythema nodosum the acknowledgements.
leprosum: An international, multicentre validation * steve.walker@lshtm.ac.uk
study of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale. PLoS Negl
Trop Dis 11(7): e0005716. https://doi.org/10.1371/
journal.pntd.0005716 Abstract
Editor: Stephen Baker, Oxford University Clinical
Research Unit, VIET NAM

Received: March 8, 2017


Objectives
We wished to validate our recently devised 16-item ENLIST ENL Severity Scale, a clinical
Accepted: June 16, 2017
tool for measuring the severity of the serious leprosy associated complication of erythema
Published: July 3, 2017
nodosum leprosum (ENL). We also wished to assess the responsiveness of the ENLIST
Copyright: © 2017 Walker et al. This is an open ENL Severity Scale in detecting clinical change in patients with ENL.
access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and Methods
reproduction in any medium, provided the original Participants, recruited from seven centres in six leprosy endemic countries, were assessed
author and source are credited.
using the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale by two researchers, one of whom categorised the
Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are severity of ENL. At a subsequent visit a further assessment using the scale was made and
within the paper and its Supporting Information
files.
both participant and physician rated the change in ENL using the subjective categories of
“Much better”, “somewhat better”, “somewhat worse” and “much worse” compared with “No
Funding: The study was funded by the Austrian
Leprosy Relief Association / AHWÖ Aussätzigen-
change” or “about the same”.
Hilfswerk Österreich (http://www.aussaetzigen-
hilfswerk.at/) and Leprosy Research Initiative Results
(https://www.leprosyresearch.org/), grant number:
703.15.15. SLW was supported in part by a grant 447 participants were assessed with the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale. The Cronbach alpha
(ITCRBH21) from the Hospital and Homes of of the scale and each item was calculated to determine the internal consistency of the scale.

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The validation of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale

St. Giles. The funders had no role in study design, The ENLIST ENL Severity Scale had good internal consistency and this improved following
data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or removal of six items to give a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.77. The cut off between mild ENL and
preparation of the manuscript.
more severe disease was 9 determined using ROC curves. The minimal important differ-
Competing interests: The authors have declared ence of the scale was determined to be 5 using both participant and physician ratings of
that no competing interests exist.
change.

Conclusions
The 10-item ENLIST ENL Severity Scale is the first valid, reliable and responsive measure
of ENL severity and improves our ability to assess and compare patients and their treat-
ments in this severe and difficult to manage complication of leprosy.
The ENLIST ENL Severity Scale will assist physicians in the monitoring and treatment of
patients with ENL. The ENLIST ENL Severity Scale is easy to apply and will be useful as an
outcome measure in treatment studies and enable the standardisation of other clinical and
laboratory ENL research.

Author summary
Erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL) is a severe, painful complication of leprosy, which
can occur before, during or after successful treatment of the infection. ENL is character-
ised by severe pain and the development of new painful skin lesions. Other organ systems
are often affected. ENL may continue to affect people for many years leading to disability,
significant loss of income and sometimes death. ENL often requires prolonged treatment
with corticosteroids, thalidomide or other drugs that modulate the immune system. Tha-
lidomide is the most effective treatment but is not widely available or affordable in many
leprosy endemic settings. This results in many people taking high doses of corticosteroids
for prolonged periods and being at risk of severe adverse effects. In order to assess the effi-
cacy of different treatments for ENL it is important to be able to compare individuals
before and after treatment. This is difficult to do in a complex, multi-system disorder such
as ENL. To overcome this problem we have developed a scale, which is easy to use, to mea-
sure the severity of ENL. In this article, we describe the validation of this scale, which
ensures that it is a useful measure of ENL severity.

Introduction
Erythema nodosum leprosum (ENL) is a severe inflammatory complication of borderline
lepromatous (BL) leprosy and lepromatous leprosy (LL). ENL affects up to 50% of individuals
with LL and 5–10% of BL leprosy patients [1, 2]. A bacterial index of four or more is also a risk
factor for developing ENL. ENL may occur before, during or after successful completion of
anti-mycobacterial multi-drug therapy (MDT)[2].
ENL causes inflammation in many systems and is characterised by severe pain, tender cuta-
neous skin lesions, fever, joint and bone pain, iritis, orchitis, lymphadenopathy and neuritis
[3]. Most patients have multiple episodes of painful inflammation extending over several years
[2, 3].

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The validation of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale

ENL is associated with a deleterious impact on health related quality of life (HRQoL)[4],
increased mortality[5] and severe economic hardship for affected individuals and their fami-
lies[6].
The Erythema Nodosum Leprosum International STudy (ENLIST) Group[7] aims to
improve the understanding of the mechanisms which cause ENL, improve the evidence to
guide treatment decisions of individuals with ENL and improve access to effective treatments.
The ENLIST Group includes clinicians and laboratory scientists with extensive experience in
the treatment and investigation of the causes of ENL based at institutions in eight countries.
The cause of ENL is unclear. It is associated with a complex array of immune activation and
consequent inflammation, which requires immunosuppression. ENL skin lesions may show
features of vasculitis and there is evidence of neutrophil and lymphocyte activation. The role of
immune complexes in ENL remains unproven. Patients are treated with corticosteroids, clofa-
zimine and thalidomide either alone or in combination, and less commonly other immuno-
modulatory agents, which are used for prolonged periods of many months or years [3]. Many
patients require high doses of corticosteroids to control their disease and this leads to compli-
cations and deaths associated with long-term use of these drugs[8]. Thalidomide is usually
effective but is not available in many countries or it is severely restricted because of the risk of
teratogenicity. Other adverse effects occur with thalidomide and these have been reported to
occur in 25–68% of individuals [9–12]. The neuropathy caused by thalidomide during its use
to treat other conditions is approximately 20% but there are no good data for the frequency of
thalidomide-induced neuropathy in patients with ENL[13]. The identification of other agents
for controlling ENL has been identified as a priority for patients in countries where thalido-
mide is prohibited or highly restricted, unaffordable, ineffective or poorly tolerated [14].
The evidence for choosing the appropriate treatment for ENL is limited. There have been
eight small, randomised treatment studies of ENL since the introduction of MDT [9–12, 15–
17]. Only 269 patients were enrolled into these studies and just three studies with a total of 53
participants reported allocation concealment and blinding [15, 16]. Determining outcome
measures for clinical studies in complex, multisystem disorders such as ENL is difficult. Quan-
titative severity scoring systems provide one possible outcome measure.There have been sev-
eral scoring systems employed in studies of ENL however none have been validated [9, 18–21].
Unpublished (non-validated) scales have been shown to be a source of bias in randomised con-
trolled trials [22, 23]. A Cochrane review highlighted the difficulty in comparing treatment
studies in ENL and recommended the development of validated severity scales[14].
We developed a 16 item scale, the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale (EESS), for measuring the
severity of ENL[24]. We applied and critically appraised three previously published scales for
ENL that had not been validated and used regression analysis of data from our cross-sectional
study of the clinical features of ENL[3] to enable us to develop the EESS.
The scale incorporates assessments of pain and wellbeing using visual analogue scales
(VAS), fever, skin signs, oedema, orchitis, ocular inflammation, joint and bone involvement,
nerve assessments and urinalysis. We wished to validate the EESS and determine the minimal
important difference (MID). MID is a concept used to determine whether an outcome is clini-
cally relevant and relates to the smallest difference in score which is perceived as beneficial
[25].

Methods
Participants who gave written, informed consent were recruited from seven centres: DBLM
Hospital, Nilphamari, The Leprosy Mission Bangladesh; Oswaldo Cruz Institute, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil; the ALERT Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Bombay Leprosy Project, Mumbai,

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India; The Leprosy Mission Hospital, Purulia, India; Anandaban Hospital, The Leprosy Mis-
sion Nepal and the Cebu Skin Clinic, the Leonard Wood Memorial Center, Cebu, Philippines.
Ethical approval was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine (Reference 10370), The Leprosy Mission International Bangladesh
Institutional Research Board, Brazilian National Ethical Review Board (CAAE:
12834613.4.0000.5248), AHRI-ALERT Ethical Review Committee (PO12/16), Ethics Commit-
tee of the Managing Committee of the Bombay Leprosy Project (BLP/OO/TRC/76A/2015),
The Leprosy Mission Trust India Ethics Committee, the Nepal Health and Research Council
(106/2011), Institutional Ethical Committee/Institutional Ethical Regulatory Board of Cebu
Leprosy and Tuberculosis Research Foundation, Inc. (CLTRFI/LWM-IEC 2015–005).
Individuals were eligible to participate in the study if they met any of the following criteria:
• Diagnosed with BL leprosy or LL within 24 months of enrolment (and who did not have
ENL or a history of ENL)
• History of ENL with no evidence of active ENL and not requiring treatment for ENL
• Diagnosed with or receiving treatment for ENL
For the purposes of the study ENL was defined as a patient with leprosy who had crops of
tender cutaneous or subcutaneous lesions or was on treatment for ENL (whether it was active
or not).
The type of ENL was categorised as acute, recurrent or chronic which were defined as
follows:
• acute for a single episode lasting less than 24 weeks,
• recurrent if a patient experienced a second or subsequent episode of ENL occurring 28 days
or more after stopping treatment for ENL
• chronic if occurring for 24 weeks or more during which a patient has required ENL treat-
ment either continuously or where any treatment free period had been 27 days or less[5].
Individuals who did not wish to give consent or were diagnosed with leprosy Type 1 reac-
tions were excluded.
Each participant was examined independently by a health worker (usually a doctor but
sometimes a physiotherapist and in one centre an experienced leprosy research scientist) who
had been trained to use the EESS and by an experienced leprologist who also applied the scale
and categorised the ENL as “inactive” or “mild” or “moderate” or “severe”. We did not attempt
to standardise the categorisation of ENL by the experienced leprologists. Neither assessor (nor
the participant) was aware of the result of the other assessor’s examination. The time interval
between the two assessments was kept as short as practicable.
At a subsequent visit, the MID of the EESS was determined by applying the scale to individ-
uals after treatment and asking both the participant and the examining leprologist to indepen-
dently categorise the change as: “much better”, “somewhat better”, “no change” (or “about the
same” for physicians), “somewhat worse” or “much worse”. The leprologist had performed
one of the original assessments at the first visit but did not apply the EESS on the second occa-
sion and was blinded to the result (as was the participant). The EESS, on this occasion, was
applied by the same health worker as at the initial visit whenever possible. The MID methodol-
ogy was only used for participants who had been categorised as having mild or moderate or
severe ENL at the first set of assessments.
All data including demographic, clinical and EESS were collected on data collection forms
specifically designed for the study. The anonymised data were entered into a password

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protected Access database at each centre and subsequently merged. The data were analysed
using Stata 14 (StataCorp. 2015 Stata Statistical Software: Release 14. College Station, TX: Stata-
Corp LP).

Statistical methods
We wished to recruit 300 participants as this would provide more than 10 study subjects per
scale item [26].
The internal consistency or reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha. An alpha
between 0.7 and 0.9 is considered acceptable[27]. The contribution of each item in the scale
was assessed by calculating Cronbach’s alpha for the scale if that item were removed.
The ability of the scale to discriminate between patients with different clinical severity cate-
gories was determined using analysis of variance. The threshold for accepting statistical signifi-
cance was p<0.05.
Inter-observer reliability was evaluated using Intra-Class Correlation of the total score of
each examiner using a two-way analysis of variation (5% level of significance) and the strength
of agreement criteria of Landis and Koch[28]. A Bland Altman plot of the difference between
pairs of observations and the mean of those pairs was used to highlight any potential system-
atic differences between assessors
Receiver operator characteristic curves were used to determine cut off points for mild, mod-
erate and severe reactions.
The ability of the scale to reflect the change in ENL was calculated as the mean of the change
in severity associated with each of the reported outcomes “Much better”, “somewhat better”,
“somewhat worse” and “much worse” compared with “No change” or “about the same” (for
physician rated change).

Results
447 individuals were recruited between 13th May 2015 and 16th July 2016. 336 (75.3%) were
male and 110 (24.7%) female. 19 physicians classified the severity of the 210 participants with
active ENL. The demographic and clinical features are summarised in Table 1.
54.3% of the 210 individuals with ENL were receiving treatment for their ENL at the time
of enrolment. Of the nine drug regimes used, prednisolone (57.2%), prednisolone and clofazi-
mine (24.6%), thalidomide (6.5%), thalidomide and prednisolone (4.3%) and clofazimine
alone (2.9%) were the most common.

Scale testing
Initially only 14 of the 16 items were considered for inclusion in the severity scale. The VAS
Wellbeing item was excluded because we wished to maintain a strictly clinical focus. Orchitis
was also omitted as we wished to try and produce a gender-neutral scale. The items showing
the lowest levels of correlation were inflammation of the eyes due to ENL, urinalysis and the
items related to sensory and motor nerve function.
The internal consistency of the 14 potential items for inclusion in the scale was assessed
using Cronbach’s alpha producing an initial value of 0.7413. The series of analyses reported
were based on the data from those individuals who had been classified as having mild or
moderate or severe ENL (n = 210). Removing eye inflammation due to ENL and urinalysis
increased the value of alpha to 0.7633. Removing the count of nerves with sensory NFI due to
ENL and the count of nerves with motor NFI due to ENL further increased alpha to 0.7672.
Removal of any further items brought a reduction in alpha, confirming the inclusion of the
remaining 10 items in the scale.

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Table 1. Characteristics of the participants in the validation study.


n (%)
Gender Male 337 (75.4)
Female 110 (24.6)
Age in years (mean±SD) 36.2±14.0
Categories of participants BL/LL without ENL 146 (32.7)
History of ENL 77 (2.9)
Inactive ENL 13 (17.2)
Mild ENL 66 (14.8)
Moderate ENL 106 (23.7)
Severe ENL 39 (8.7)
Type of ENL (n = 210) Acute 60 (28.6)
Recurrent 38 (18.1)
Chronic 98 (46.7)
Not specified 14 (6.7)
MDT status Naive All 26 (5.8)
ENL 4
Current All 267 (59.9)
ENL 102
Completed All 153 (34.3)
ENL 104
Treatment for ENL at time of enrolment No treatment 96 (45.7)
Treatment 114 (54.3)
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The derived 10 item scale was analysed separately for men to see if the addition of orchitis
significantly altered the internal consistency. Using the data for men alone the 10 item scale
has a Cronbach alpha of 0.7633 which increases to 0.7645 with the addition of orchitis. The
increase in alpha did not result in greater internal consistency for men compared to men and
women combined.

Unidimensionality and discrimination of the 10 item scale


Principal component analysis showed a general factor to which all 10 items contributed
accounting for 33.4% of the total variance. A second “pain” factor contributed 16.0% of the
total variance. It contrasted VAS pain, bone pain, inflammation of joints and nerve tenderness
with items describing the number, extent and inflammation of skin lesions and
lymphadenopathy.
The 10 item scale discriminated well between patients with active ENL and those without.
Fig 1 shows the distribution
The difference in scores between the non-ENL group and those categorised as having mild
ENL were significant (p<0.001, parametric and non-parametric test).
A threshold value differentiating between those who were classified as having “moderate”
ENL and those with “severe” ENL was not identified by either score or ROC curve. However,
the difference in mean severity scores was statistically significant (p<0.001, parametric and
non-parametric test).
The EESS scores of participants with acute or recurrent or chronic ENL were not signifi-
cantly different.

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Fig 1. Box plot of the 10 item scale by expert classification showing medians, interquartile ranges and
minimum and maximum scores.
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The intra-class correlation coefficient assuming random effect for both patients and asses-
sors and individual assessors is 0.797 (95% CI 0.742, 0.843). The strength of agreement is good
[28].
A Bland-Altman plot (Fig 2) showed good agreement between the two assessors of each
patient with no evidence of a systematic difference in terms of larger differences for higher

Fig 2. Bland-Altman plot of the two scores derived from the 10 item EESS at the first assessment.
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The validation of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale

Fig 3. ROC curve for those with mild ENL and those with either moderate or severe ENL.
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severity scores. 15 (7.4%) of the 204 paired assessments fell outside the confidence limits but
these were evenly distributed between positive and negative differences.
To determine the cut off score between “mild” and more severe categories of ENL the ROC
curve was plotted for patients classified as having “mild” ENL and those with either moderate
or severe ENL (Fig 3).
Mild ENL was determined to be an EESS score of 8 or less and more severe forms scoring 9
or more (Fig 4). The area under the curve for mild and combined moderate and severe ENL is
0.8372. This value indicates that the final scale is a good discriminator between the mild and
more severe categories of ENL traditionally used by clinicians.
152 participants with ENL completed the two sets of assessments. The median interval
between these two sets of assessments was 28 days, range 0 to 185.The changes in EESS scores
and the participant rated and physician rated improvement are shown in Figs 5 and 6
respectively.
Table 2 shows the mean change in scores for each participant-rated or physician-rated
change and the difference from “no change” or “about the same” respectively. The MID was
4.9 for both participants and physicians which equates to a change in EESS score of 5. The
change in mean EESS score from baseline to “much better” which resulted in an “important
difference” was 8.4 for participants and 7.0 for physicians. This equates to a change in EESS
score of 9.

Discussion
Leprosy reactions present a major challenge to the successful management of the disease. The
adapted version of the EESS is a valid and reliable measure of the severity of ENL. We have
been able to show that it discriminates between patients with mild ENL and more severe dis-
ease. The scale and accompanying guide (S1 Appendix) are easy for clinicians to use.
A clinical tool to measure the severity of leprosy Type 1 reactions was designed and vali-
dated by some members of the ENLIST Group [29]. Type 1 reactions are a major cause of
nerve damage in leprosy. The Type 1 reaction severity scale was first validated in Brazil and
Bangladesh and in a subsequent study from Ethiopia[30]. It has been shown to reflect change

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The validation of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale

Fig 4. Box plot of 10 item EESS scores for mild compare with moderate and severe ENL. The line in red
indicates the cut off between mild ENL and more severe disease.
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Fig 5. Change in EESS score and participant rated improvement.


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The validation of the ENLIST ENL Severity Scale

Fig 6. Change in EESS score and physician rated improvement.


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in severity following treatment and has been used in clinical trials of corticosteroids, azathio-
prine and ciclosporin [31–34]. We believe that the EESS has the potential to be equally impor-
tant in ENL.
The EESS is gender-neutral following removal of the orchitis item which did not materially
affect the internal consistency of the scale. The two items relating to NFI were removed from
the final version of the EESS but clinicians should remain vigilant to new NFI occurring in the
context of ENL, which we have previously shown to have a prevalence of 22.9% in individuals
with ENL[3]. Nerve tenderness is a component of the scale but nerve tenderness does not
always accompany NFI. Eye involvement due to ENL is not included in the scale and clinicians
will need to be cognizant of this uncommon feature when using the EESS.
We were able to demonstrate that the EESS discriminates between moderate and severe
ENL but could not determine a cut off score for the two categories. We did not attempt to stan-
dardise physician assessment of the severity of ENL which is a limitation of the study. The

Table 2. Change in EESS score and participant and physician rated change with difference from “No change” or “About the same”.
Participant rated/ Physician rated change
Much better Somewhat better No change/About the same Somewhat worse Much worse
Mean change in EESS score 10.2 ± 4.4 6.7± 5.7 1.8 ± 6.6 1.3± 6.0 -2.0 ± 1.4
±SD by participant
Difference from “No change” 8.4 (7.3, 9.5) 4.9 (3.8, 6.0) ---------- -0.6 (-2.1, 1.0) -3.8 (-5.1, -2.6)
(95% CI)
Mean change in EESS score 9.2 ±5.1 7.1 ± 5.7 2.7± 5.3 2.0 ±7.2 -2.6± 3.9
±SD by physician
Difference from “About the same” 7.0 (5.9, 8.1) 4.9 (3.8, 6.0) ----------- -0.2 (-2.0, 1.6) -4.8 (-6.2, -3.4)
(95% CI)
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overlap of scores in the group categorised as having “moderate” ENL and those with “severe”
ENL is likely to have occurred due to variation in physician perception of the construct of ENL
severity. The multisystem nature of ENL may mean that different physicians attach different
weight to different symptoms or signs when categorising ENL severity. Variation between phy-
sician global assessments has also been reported to occur during comparison of different meth-
ods for the assessment of flares in systemic lupus erythematosus [35].
The MID of the EESS was determined using both participant and physician reported
change. There are no agreed criteria for determining which group should be used for deter-
mining MID. It has been argued that physicians are the best judges of change in measures of
disease activity or damage, whereas in functional or HRQoL measures it is the affected individ-
ual [36]. We felt it was important to assess the responsiveness of the EESS using both groups.
The results were concordant with an MID of 5 for both groups. The greatest discordance, of
two scale units, between the ratings of participants and physicians occurred for the change of
“much better”.
The EESS is the first validated, published scale of ENL severity and is responsive to change
in ENL. We plan to use the EESS in future double-blind randomised controlled treatment
studies of ENL and believe it will be an important tool for other clinical researchers. The scale
will also be useful in providing a standardised way of describing the severity of ENL in patients
who participate in immunological and genetic studies. It is equally important that the EESS be
incorporated into routine clinical practice where we believe it will help physicians to assess,
monitor and treat patients.

Supporting information
S1 Appendix. ENLIST ENL Severity Scale. Validated ENLIST ENL Severity Scale and User
Guide.
(PDF)

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the participants who took part in the study and the organisations where the
work was conducted. The membership of the ENLIST Group also includes: Nanda Ajayan,
Medhi Alinda, Sylvia Anggraeni, Annamma John, M. Yulianto Listiawan, Milton Moraes,
Lilian Pinheiro Rodrigues Nogueira and Euzenir Sarno.
In Bangladesh we would like to acknowledge Shamsun Naher, Virginia Sukla Biswas, Kiron
S. Chokroborty, Kalpona Roy and Rehana Begum. In Nepal, we would like to acknowledge the
contribution of the Mycobacterial Research Laboratories staff: Pawan Parajuli, Ruby Thapa,
Divya RSJB Rana, Preeti Maharjan and Jeni Maharjan. In Ethiopia, we would like to acknowl-
edge the assistance provided by Yilma Tesfay.

Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Stephen L. Walker, Diana N. J. Lockwood.
Data curation: Peter G. Nicholls.
Formal analysis: Stephen L. Walker, Peter G. Nicholls.
Funding acquisition: Stephen L. Walker, Diana N. J. Lockwood.
Investigation: Stephen L. Walker, Anna M. Sales, C. Ruth Butlin, Mahesh Shah, Armi Magha-
noy, Saba M. Lambert, Joydeepa Darlong, Benjamin Jewel Rozario, Vivek V. Pai, Marivic
Balagon, Shimelis N. Doni, Deanna A. Hagge, José A. C. Nery, Kapil D. Neupane, Suwash

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Baral, Biliom A. Sangma, Digafe T. Alembo, Abeba M. Yetaye, Belaynesh A. Hassan,


Mohammed B. Shelemo, Peter G. Nicholls, Diana N. J. Lockwood.
Methodology: Stephen L. Walker, C. Ruth Butlin, Peter G. Nicholls, Diana N. J. Lockwood.
Project administration: Stephen L. Walker, Anna M. Sales, C. Ruth Butlin, Armi Maghanoy,
Saba M. Lambert, Joydeepa Darlong, Vivek V. Pai, Shimelis N. Doni, Deanna A. Hagge,
Kapil D. Neupane, Biliom A. Sangma.
Resources: Stephen L. Walker.
Supervision: Stephen L. Walker, C. Ruth Butlin, Diana N. J. Lockwood.
Validation: Stephen L. Walker, C. Ruth Butlin.
Visualization: Stephen L. Walker.
Writing – original draft: Stephen L. Walker, Peter G. Nicholls.
Writing – review & editing: Stephen L. Walker, Anna M. Sales, C. Ruth Butlin, Mahesh Shah,
Armi Maghanoy, Saba M. Lambert, Joydeepa Darlong, Benjamin Jewel Rozario, Vivek V.
Pai, Marivic Balagon, Shimelis N. Doni, Deanna A. Hagge, José A. C. Nery, Kapil D. Neu-
pane, Suwash Baral, Biliom A. Sangma, Digafe T. Alembo, Abeba M. Yetaye, Belaynesh A.
Hassan, Mohammed B. Shelemo, Peter G. Nicholls, Diana N. J. Lockwood.

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